March 2015 Archives

March 1, 2015

On Friday, February 27th, 2015 we learned of Leonard Nimoy’s passing. That very afternoon, a plan was hatched for Andorian (blue) and Orion (green) delegates to gather at Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco, California to create a memorial for the late Ambassador Spock.

12 Resistance Agents and 22 Enlightened Agents gathered at 2:00 PM on Sunday, March 1st to build a series of fields in the shape of the Starfleet Insignia.

The day started off with many green fields over a several block radius, and half as many Resistance Agents as Enlightened Agents on the ground to clear them. We split up into 3 cross-faction car teams, 1 agent on bike, 1 agent on rollerblades and the the rest on foot.

The plan was to have the agent on bike and the car teams clear the perimeter first so that a bounding box could be created to prevent feral agents from interfering with our artwork. This proved to be quite difficult. In a highly populated and portal-dense city such as San Francisco, one blocking link going down only provides an opportunity for another to go up.

In the end, we overcame the links from feral agents and completed the field art in under 3 hours.

This was my first time operating for a cross-faction event, and many valuable lessons were learned. I was absolutely amazed by how well everything came together. My approach going into this operation as a first-time cross-faction event organizer was that if I wanted the Resistance to trust me, I would have to trust them. I would also have to treat all team members equally, regardless of faction. This meant that I would dole out resources equally if anyone needed anything. (And yes, I did hand out XMPs to the Resistance.)

The location of the field art was not ideal, because a portion of it was in one of the busiest parts of town. The command center was also off the map due to safety and space constraints and could have benefited from a more central location.

A more equal turnout from both factions could have been achieved if given more time to promote the event. The success of our team proved that great teamwork can overcome any oversight in planning.